Ambitious film has its moments but gets bogged down in creamed corn.

Rating: 3/10 (30 December 2011)

I knew this film was in trouble when near the beginning French model Irina Demick, playing a member of the French underground, rides a bike in a 1962 hairdo and makeup. If you were going for authenticity, don't let an actress appear with such an obvious joke of a hairdo. The rest of the movie is submerged in corny dialogue and wholesome soldiers who have the personalities of 8-year old cub scouts (Richard Beymer, Red Buttons) or of cranky lint bags (John Wayne, Peter Lawford, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum). The combat action depicted here is very weak - the horrors of Omaha Beach are not conveyed to any degree that would do justice to what had actually occurred there. None of the chaos and stark terror that is war is shown in this film - only down scaled, obviously choreographed, watered down nonsense. The beginning of he film showed promise, with the drum roll beating as the action shifts from the German fortifications - the marching soldiers, the German officer playing fetch with a German shepherd on the beach.....then we see Irina with her bubble-flip hairdo....and it's all downhill from there.